For over a year, you have been part of an extraordinary journey. A journey back in the early days of World of Warcraft. A journey in which hundreds of thousands of people took part in together. Something that we had never seen before, either on retail or private servers. Together, we built a strong community, sharing values and a common genuine interest for this wonderful game created by Blizzard.

Yesterday, we received a letter of formal notice from US and french lawyers, acting on behalf of Blizzard Entertainment, preparing to stand trial against our hosting company OVH and ourselves in less than a week now. This means the de facto end of Nostalrius under its current form.

As soon as we received this letter, we decided to inform the team and players about the future of Nostalrius, where we have all passionately committed our time and energy as volunteers.

Nostalrius Begins PvP, Nostalrius Begins PvE & Nostalrius TBC and all related servers will be definitively shutdown at 23:00 server time on the 10th of April 2016, if our hosting company keeps the server online for that long. It feels kind of unreal, but we want to continue to serve our players as we did, and the best we can in the remaining time.

What will happen next? This time, we have no plan for the future, and will have to rely entirely on our community and/or the private server scene.

We know the time you spent here, the guilds you were part of, and these people with whom you have shared experiences with. We know the strength of these links, and we also know that they do not need a special WoW realm to survive. However, we will still be publicly providing everything needed in order to setup your own “Nostalrius” if you are willing to.

Today is also the day where Nostalrius will start being community-driven in the truest sense of the word, as we will be releasing the source code, and anonymized players data (encrypting personal account data), so the community as a whole will decide the form of the future of Nostalrius. We will still be there in the background if you want us to, but will no longer take the lead.

[We also initiated an open letter addressed to Blizzard, that you can read and forward it if you want. It won’t bring Nostalrius back, but it is a way to express ourselves as a community.]

Nostalrius was all about the nostalgia and memories of the glorious vanilla days. We don’t know if you truly felt like it was the glory days while playing here, but we hope that you will keep good memories of the time spent here. Once again, we can all be proud to have been part of the Nostalrius journey, no matter how much time was actually spent “in-game”.

A wonderful era has come to an end. An era filled with difficult, sometimes stressful moments but still with the utmost exciting times I've ever had the luck to experience within the world of Azeroth. I was extremely fortunate in being given the opportunity to assist fellow players within the game, the game that we all cherish so much. There's been many memorable moments for me, many of which I'll never forget. We as a community has accomplished much and we all should be proud of it. These memories are truly a one-of-a-kind and I hope you all feel the same.

There's really no words to say here. I personally feel like i've lost a good friend. But I will always appreciate all the great times raiding myself & watching your raids while you couldn't see me, interactions with the players I've met along the way, and the great vanilla experience the admins brought to us. And I know I'll be seeing you all somewhere else along the way.

As always, have a great time on wherever your journeys lead you, and stay safe!Benevael

Well, it's been a blast. I, like many of you all, never expected this day to come. I really enjoyed helping out players in need, even though sometimes that included enforcing our ruleset. It was stressful at times, but entirely worth the result. What we all have built here, both the experiences and community, will never be forgotten. I look forward to playing alongside and overseeing such a fine community again one day.

I started playing on Nostalrius on Day 1 and I joined the GM team in early April 2015 so I have had a front row seat to observe the project grow and evolve. I truly hoped and believed that this day would not come. While I am saddened that the fantastic project has to be shut down, I am glad for being able to relive vanilla WoW once more - levelling, PvP, raiding. I'm especially grateful for the chance to be a Game Master and see the "other side" even if occasionally players were driving me crazy. I feel sorry for the players who are currently levelling as they will not be able to experience end game content on Nostalrius, but this is even more devastating for the guilds heavily invested in raiding who have prepared for months to enter AQ40 and eventually Naxxramas. Hopefully the friendships we, and all you players, have formed on Nostalrius can survive in another form, possible somewhere else.

My journey started on launch to relive Vanilla WoW memories from my youth and I wanted to help out the server as much as I could so I joined the GM team during May of last year to help my fellow Azerothians.

I would like to thank Viper/Demon for their time work and effort they have put into this server and all the other staff members both current and resigned for their time trying to make Azeroth a better place for all.

There is so much more that I would like to say but I am a man of few words.

Never got to 60! dev server doesn't count~~Bringing this tiny server to such a huge one was a big journey. At the time the player base could fit on one teamspeak server. And we took the decision all together to make it what it is now. We did wonderfully. I thank the players who believed in us and spread the word before launch. Even though we have not been able to do everything we wanted to, we have still demonstrated that players love the original WoW, and that this is not just "rose tinted glasses".

Hard work that goes unfinished never leaves someone in a good place. I feel like someone I knew and loved died when I found out the news of Nostalrius's imminent shutdown. If our community finds a way to continue to survive this ordeal, rest assured I will be there.

The moment I discovered Nostalrius within the first month of its launch, I knew that I wanted to be a part of such an amazing project and community. I even applied for a GM position before creating an in-game account. It ended up taking 2 weeks and 2 more applications before I was interviewed and accepted to join the GM Team. Once in the team I then discovered just how genuine the Admins were and their vision of what Nostalrius is and should be. I quickly left my character behind to volunteer full time never taking a day off as a GM working my way up through the ranks getting to know the staff, many of which have grown to friendships outside of the project. After a few months, I was given the opportunity to take over as GM Lead and join the Core Team allowing me to shape the GM Team and the server as a whole to be inline with the vision of the Admins and what we believed was best for the community.

I enjoyed every moment of it, cherishing the memories and learning from my experiences. The community was vast and one of a kind containing many interesting personalities and groups. The jokes and memes were refreshing while also being so very wrong. The staff including the Admins and GM Team were not corrupt and did not affiliate with or prefer any guild or player. All members of staff in leadership and oversight roles volunteered all of their time as staff members and did not maintain personal characters as doing so was our true passion and to further strengthen our stance on impartiality.

It’s sad to see Nostalrius come to an end. However, I’m glad to have been a part of this journey and to know that we have helped shape a legacy that will continue for many years through the private server community. I would like to thank Daemon and Viper for the opportunity and trust, Ithlien for being Aweesome, a Magycian and helping lead the GM Team, Nano for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge, the GM Team for allowing me to lead them and helping serve the players, the Dev and ISVV team for working so hard to make the server what it is today and all of the players for building this massive community that will last in many forms through the end of Nostalrius.

Farewell,Tyrael

P.S. The GM Team will still be providing support for the players until the server's last breath.